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After a pretty rough school year, I was looking forward to getting some things done around the house. During the school year, I had to learn a new subject area, Social Studies. As much as history does not change, I … Continue reading →

When I wake up and start my day and everything just follows along in a neutral way and nothing out of the ordinary happens, it just becomes another day, for which I’m grateful. If something doesn’t go well for enough … Continue reading →

This past week, I made a hard, terrible, but necessary mistake. I sold my Harley Davidson motorcycle. For the first time in thirty three years, I am now without a bike. After three decades of owning and riding a motorcycle, … Continue reading →

Daybreak – Chapter 1 Anders Westerlund flipped over a packet of cucumber seeds and read out loud, “Plant after all danger of frost has passed.” Even in April, daybreak in Danemark was a chilly affair. Jensen kept insisting that the … Continue reading →

It was like 2007 all over again. Not wanting to deal with “big city” traffic, congestion and parking hassles, we drove through Inverness as quickly as possible and retreated to the Scottish countryside, this time, on a farm high in … Continue reading →

A day did not go by that Dylan McKenzie did not think about the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall”. His mother had given him nightmares telling him stories about how the large companies were poisoning the environment.

“Someday even the rain will be made up of poisonous, toxic chemicals,” she’d told him. “And it will fall on everyone and cause horrible diseases and painful deaths.”

She spoke of the future violence to come when children carried weapons and fought in the streets. He’d once read the lyrics, but it had been like a Rubik’s cube to his young brain and he’d latched onto his mother’s wisdom and had turned Bob Dylan into his own personal idol and prophet.

As he grew older he began to wonder why nobody stopped the chemical companies, why the people of his mother’s generation were so intent on peaceful solutions, when obviously they didn’t work, and why did they spend so much time smoking pot and wiling away the days when so much work needed to be done?

Flower Power. What a cop out that turned out to be. Fear and intimidation were the only ways to get people to do what you wanted.

He had learned that much from his dad, who’d once been a flower child himself, but had since learned the real ways of the world. He’d seen his dad push people around and noticed how they backed off and let him get his own way. Dylan knew the shame of letting his dad intimidate him. But he’d always just been a kid. The day would come when the old man wouldn’t be pushing on him anymore.

When Private Investigator, Tina Munroe agrees to help out an old friend little does she know the danger she’s put herself and her loved ones in. Billy Hutchins is being stalked by a killer who has a bead on him and Tina’s desire to protect Billy places her squarely in the stalker’s sights. She encounters vandalism, a psycho with a Molotov cocktail, a gangster who has his own agenda for mixing into her case and a high speed chase through the city of Las Vegas. The reader is taken to Laughlin, Nevada, The Lake Mead Marina, the World Series of Poker in Vegas and a trek through the pouring rain in the pitch black of night through a snake infested desert. Time is running out when her friend and assistant, Megan is kidnapped. Have Tina’s actions to save one friend caused another friend to die? Can she stop the killer in time? Could the killer be someone she knows and trusts?

Second Wind: What has changed for you personally since you wrote your first book?

Nancy Niles: I’ve become much more observant of people and more aware of life changing situations that are going on around us all the time. I hear life changing stories from the news, from strangers and from friends. I also have developed a habit of asking myself how different personalities would have reacted to the same problem or event. In fact, I think I am probably constantly writing in my head and developing characters now that I am a published author. I have gained more confidence in my writing. I find that I want to write more and I feel as though something is missing if I miss a day of writing.